by T. A. Miles
Korsten understood as it was happening, that the fact had Vlas looking to him for direction. Korsten hovered amid indecision regarding his own actions already. He was even less certain how to direct his peer.
In spite of that, Korsten motioned with his hand that Vlas should stay still as he had been. Serawe seemed distracted enough with Korsten, regardless of Vlas’ prior attack. There was no need to change that just yet, especially as Korsten had no idea how well or for how long he would be able to hold the attention of all of the demons present.
Another of the lesser beasts was speared and taken up to the ceiling, peeled out of its vessel. Korsten knew this would only make Serawe stronger. He knew that prolonged working of Allurance would eventually exhaust him and deplete any effect he hoped to have on the Vadryn. He considered also the blood. By whatever means, it was all around him...flowing impossibly toward the archdemon. If he couldn’t feel her power, he could certainly see it. It surrounded him.
But it wasn’t hers, he reminded himself. Not entirely.
Korsten’s heart stumbled into a quicker rhythm while he stood still, realizing again that he was surrounded by blood...by demons encased in it as well as by flowing pillars of it on a sheet of it spanning across the ceiling. It should have been raining down onto him, but somehow the archdemon had contained it…netted it in a fleshy film that glistened with the movement of blood and of her. Was any of this illusion? He wondered and even glanced toward Vlas for some confirmation in one direction or the other.
His fellow priest seemed awestruck as well, though whether it was over the demons or the unnatural flow of blood Korsten was seeing, he had no way of knowing.
You do know, he told himself. You can feel this. You know that it’s real. You can feel her, and them.
In his mind, the words were not wholly his own. They were inspired by Merran. Korsten knew that a part of him still wanted to shelter from this madness...from this war, from this new life...
He grasped vainly toward ignorance when he felt the pressure bearing down on him, and Merran always pulled him back around and set reality before him. This was what his life had become. There was no hiding from it or stepping aside so that it could pass him by. His attendance was imperative and unavoidable. He’d already learned that, but there was still some amount of fear at the prospect of embracing his destiny fully. It was time to shed another layer of that fear, before Serawe uncovered it. Korsten felt as if every move she made was working to expose him, to discover how vulnerable he still was and to shatter the mask Allurance showed her.
As the thoughts formed so readily, he came to the harsh awareness that it was the archdemon working her suppressive will against him. It reminded him very quickly of how he’d felt in the presence of another of her kind.
Another of the confused Vadryn which huddled near to him was taken by the same sudden, brutal means as the two before it. As its smoky presence drifted upward, spiraling the shaft of hardened blood Serawe had dropped onto it, Korsten found himself suddenly angered.
She was toying with him, trying to whittle him down and using her own in a grotesque physical representation of her tactics. Korsten was irritated as well, to witness her disregard her followers so idly, like the crone had done. Over what? The gluttony of her kind? What did the Vadryn want in this war?
“What do you want?” Korsten muttered and he drew in a sharp breath, half-prepared to shout his question, but then Serawe spoke to him.
“You know what we want.” Her voice traveled in a series of disconnected echoes across the chamber, helping to keep her physical location hidden. “You’re going to help us find it. But you won’t be his this time...you’ll be mine. Come back to us, sweet Korsten. Come to me....”
Dread spiked within his heart, making its rhythm painful. Agitation that was equally sharp raked against his skin, causing him to tremble slightly while he glared at the canopy of blood overhead. His state sent a ripple of response through the remaining horde of Vadryn around him.
Some of the creatures released their shared tension with hissing sounds, their malformed lips peeling back from black teeth. A few of the demons rose to a stand from their prior crouched positions. Their stance emanated challenge and defiance that mirrored the sensations rising within Korsten. He was uncertain if it was by his will, or theirs, that they attacked.
Twenty-Four
To say that Vaelyx was startled by what he’d seen would be an understatement. He was that, to a level that made it difficult for him to concentrate on the task at hand. He had known that the well was there; he’d dreamed about it more often than he cared to consider, but to actually see it...to smell it and feel it...knowing that it represented so much carnage and malevolence...
When he’d met Serawe, she was a woman...an enchantress, some might have said, but in his younger days he would not have labeled her a demon. She was beautiful...of another world or a dream, but still so present and so real. Perhaps his seduction was all too easy for her. Perhaps he should have been able to see what he saw so clearly now, what he’d seen in dreams shared with a daughter that should not have been conceived. Maybe to Raiss, he did appear a fool and mad. He’d gone about everything wrong. Maybe. It didn’t matter. This was the last nightmare he was sharing with a demon.
“Were you a member of the coven?”
The voice of the young woman who’d assigned herself his keeper since parting ways with the priests brought him back to the moment. He glanced over at her strong, youthful features that spoke heavily of the Islands’ native people and shook his head. “No.”
“Did you feed her?” Imris asked next—it may have been the same question with different words.
Again, Vaelyx shook his head. “No.”
Thinking back on his encounter with the woman Serawe had seemed, it was all too brief and scarcely real enough to recall. It had happened in a house not far from the caves. During his stay in a structure he wasn’t expecting to find on an ‘uninhabited’ island, he dreamed of waking in the night and seeing lights in the woods and fires on the rocks. When he’d awakened on what he’d thought was the following morning, he was alone in the house and his investigation into the area had brought him to the mouth of a cave.
In that hour, he’d turned away. Without admitting it to himself, he’d known it was the depths of hell he’d come to the threshold of. He wasn’t ready for the punishment he may have earned. Not a year later, hounded by nightmares he could not have described on threat of his life, he returned to the island. A woman waited for him in the house and presented him with a daughter. She’d said that Serawe had gifted him.
So many dismal and shameful thoughts had gone through his mind then, including ways to kill the infant. Ultimately, he could not—perhaps the demon knew he would not be able to—and he brought the child to the coven. Without priests present, without the Vassenleigh Order responding to him, he considered the witches the next best option. Surely, they would know what to do with a child of foul conception...surely, they would be able to protect her from her own tainted soul. He knew he could not, and he would not put any of it on his nephew...not so directly, not then.
Ersana volunteered to take the girl, but she had to become a child of the Ancient Mother, and so did he. Vaelyx accepted the terms and planned to have no further contact with his daughter. After his arrest, it seemed he would not have to worry about it. But then the dreams started.
Through the dreams Vaelyx learned that he hadn’t spent a night on the island, but several. He’d lost months and he’d been practicing all of the ritual his obsessive study of the Islands coven had planted in his mind.
Maybe in that way, he was a member of Serawe’s cult after all, though he’d never given blood to the demon, not that he could recall. He thought it better, then, that he should remain imprisoned. As the intensity of the nightmares grew, he realized that he couldn’t leave it alone.
At a very y
oung age, his daughter joined him in his dreams. He spoke to her and she showed him the world outside of his cell through her eyes that should have been innocent. It was very easy to move with her and later to guide her movement. She became increasingly absent to the experience and at one point, Ersana visited to insist that he stop. He promised her then that he would, and as the dreams continued, he continued to have contact with Dacia. Escape was simple, but he had used the Islands method, which was the same as passing through the demon’s domain.
Alerted fully to Dacia, Serawe moved to claim her. She sent one of her own to inhabit the vessel she’d made of human flesh. What she would have done with Dacia, Vaelyx couldn’t say. Serawe had been interrupted, by the last source Vaelyx had hoped to see in Indhovan again.
With the priests present, it was only a matter of time before the one he and Dacia had dreamed about showed himself. The ancient boy, who would dam the flow of Serawe’s curse. In the dream Serawe was a giant spider, who didn’t seem to notice the golden head in her midst. Vaelyx took that to mean that Vlas would be able to go into the caves unnoticed by the demon and that they would have no contact.
He hadn’t anticipated the arrival of another priest and to his recollection there was no part of the dream that included the redhead. The fate of the blond in his and Dacia’s shared dream was to be buried alive.
And now Vaelyx found himself searching for the very tools that would potentially hasten that fate. If only Imris understood what other than exhaustion inspired the hesitation in his steps. As protective of the priest as she seemed to have grown, she might have clubbed him and abandoned their search. Then again, considering her open hatred of the Islands coven and its ways, she might have continued through with it anyway, trusting the priest or his fellow to avoid hazard. Maybe that way of thinking would be correct. He found himself old and direly short on faith.
Vaelyx felt remiss for not telling everything to Vlas, but he imagined the headstrong and cynical nature of the priest would have had him dismiss the threat.
“Where will we find these tools?” Imris asked, innocent of Vaelyx’s internal justifications and maybe accepting his previous answers.
Vaelyx looked around them. The sound and smell of the pyre they’d made of the ghouls permeated the damp air. The odor was enough to make a person ill and hopefully enough to ward off any others of the coven’s unfortunate members.
“The area where we entered,” he said. “Seems a good place to start.”
Whether or not Imris agreed, she didn’t say anything. They continued on in silence until they arrived at the burning bodies of the ghouls who had tried to ambush them. A sign that Serawe was alert to attack.
She’d been at odds with the Ancient Mother for some time by now, desperate to counteract the old woman’s betrayal. Serawe had received what she’d bargained for; durable bodies for her demon ranks that were easy to inhabit and difficult to be shaken out of by the specialized tactics of the priests. The crone had asked for peace for her own followers, time during which they could fortify themselves and her from the inevitable strike that would occur when Serawe learned of the deception.
They were made for each other, yes...soul sisters in their cunning and their duplicity. It went without saying that, even had the crone been honest in her dealings, Serawe would have sooner or later betrayed her and brought down the coven. Vaelyx tried to warn Ersana, as he’d tried to warn Raiss and the Vassenleigh Order, but by one way or another they were all deaf to his warnings.
And now here we all are.
Vaelyx understood that he’d been a tool, one of convenience. He’d made himself available and been cast aside afterward. Serawe didn’t respond to his presence, either because she was so accustomed to it through the dreams that it all felt the same to her, or because she was simply not interested. And, as the dream promised, she hadn’t noticed Vlas. Of course, she did have another priest actively confronting her. Vaelyx wasn’t convinced that one was enough to challenge her, though. Not for long.
He watched Imris make quicker steps to the pyre of ghouls when it came into view. She grabbed up one of the torches left on the ground after their earlier skirmish and refreshed it in the still smoldering pile of bodies.
Vaelyx summoned himself to the task ahead and moved in to haul away one of the corpses hosting more smoke than flame. With a path opened, he and the constable continued back toward the mining site they’d been dropped down onto. There would surely be the tools they required for the dramatic use of fire, enough force and fuel to bring down the well chamber. And that moment, if successful, might be the last either he or the constable would see of Priest Vlas.
The view overhead was of blood, raining down in steady streams as the Vadryn encased in Serawe and the crone’s concocted vessels tore at Serawe’s web of veritable flesh. The basins on the chamber floor had been all but emptied for the canopy she’d made. They were filling again while the demons tore at their mistress’ veil. She retaliated with ferocity that scattered bits of her minions wherever they may have fallen. The lesser demons carried on in spite of injury and were stopped only when Serawe managed to inflict a wound that enabled her to suck the dark spirits from their casing. After realizing the crone’s betrayal, they had wanted freedom from the vessels and Serawe had wanted it for them, but not this soon and not this way. Korsten could feel her frustration, as surely as he could feel that of the others and as surely as all of them could feel his.
Serawe had been stationed here to weaken the coastal border...to poison it slowly with the Islands coven and to use her cult to harvest valuable materials that were then supplied to Morenne. The knowledge spilled from her mind to Korsten’s as if from an overfull cup in an unsteady hand. She’d come too close to him, but the others had come closer still, enough that they felt a claim. Korsten was slow realizing that it wasn’t a claim over him that they felt, but rather as if they had been claimed...by him, and now they would endeavor to defend and impress. They were all vying for favor, rendering their attacks on Serawe all the more vicious. They would not stop until they each had the larger piece to bring back to a new master.
Korsten was awestruck by what he felt, not only from them, but from himself. He was encouraging them, as if he’d dipped his hand into water and stirred it. They responded to the motion he generated and as they moved with that spinning flow, threads of their being radiated back to him. Serawe pulsated at the distant center of the vortex. Korsten felt that he could dive into it and absorb her.
It was then, that he realized he stood on the edge of disaster; that he’d been brought to the threshold where those in intimate contact with a very ancient of the Vadryn were tempted into oblivion. Korsten had been here more than once before; for a prolonged time with Renmyr and, more recently, when faced with Leodyn. But it had not been an archdemon’s seduction which brought him here in this instance. It was his own power over one of them. It was his seduction of Serawe. And now they were too close.
You will not defeat me! The archdemon shrieked in his mind, frustration tearing across his senses, like a cut on his skin. I’m fed here, and I will smother you—and take you as well. When your body expires and has satisfied me, I will find the rest of you. I will smear the essence of you all over me and use it to lure your lovers and your kin. You will come back to us after all.
I was never with you, Korsten answered, more for himself than for her. He had to enforce to himself that she was attempting to manipulate what he remembered, so that he would not succumb to her efforts. He loved Renmyr. He had not allied himself with a demon.
Ignorance of the truth does not negate it, Serawe told him ruthlessly. She knew how it cut, for she could feel it as well as he could. They were at each other’s mercy, or the lack of it.
The lack of it...
For an instant, Korsten pressed the lesser Vadryn to attack her more vigorously. For an instant, he urged them to do it for him. The immediate respo
nse that he felt—the immediate rise to his command—sickened him so much, that he dropped his spell. It was the only spell he’d ever cast that required nothing more than thought, and only enough of it to generate a level of emotion that would sustain it.
That was the danger of an enthraller. What a curse the gods had put onto him and others...except it was Adrea. His predecessor had chosen this for him. Why? She should have let it die with her.
Serawe felt his emotion grow too heavy for him. She detected it collapsing on him, and she struck him a heavy blow.
The moment he pulled back from the other Vadryn by withdrawing Allurance, the demons became somewhat confounded again. The blood and their own rage left them in a sort of frenzied state, but some of the vigor and focus had left their attack.
Serawe dropped out of her net, pouncing directly onto Korsten.
They both tumbled briefly, stopping when Korsten rolled against the edge of one of the stone basins. He wound up on his side, with Serawe’s claws gripping one arm and sunken partway into his side. Her weight and the immensity of her dark presence helped to pin him in place.
“I am going to eat you,” she said, almost giddily. She put her mouth on his shoulder, fangs edging through her lips, while her dark hair hung in blood-saturated strands around her face.
Korsten thrust his arm back, managing to shoulder her in the chin and to rake her claws further across his skin in the process. The scratches stung immensely, but the superficial nature of them would ensure a full healing. Lurching away from the stabbing claws at his side while he twisted to shove her off was less certain. He could feel a burning with the blood loss in that area. He did his best to ignore it, folding a leg between them to hold her off while he manifested his weapon, punching a shorter, wider version of it at her.
He was surprised at how instinctively he went for her throat, though he just caught her collar as she rolled herself unnaturally up and over him. She grabbed onto his shoulders to bring her with him and he went, letting himself fall on top of her. A strange satisfaction clashed against her anger as their bodies collided solidly.